LIZ JONES: Why lifesaver Dawn French is worthy of her own D-Day

Dawn French pictured on the opening night of her brave new show 'Thirty Million Minutes' in Sheffield

At the end of a week when the parents of an 11-year-old boy who weighs 15st were arrested, I went to see Dawn French in her one-woman show.

Much of the performance is given a backdrop of the newspaper headlines that have dogged Dawn throughout her career, making fun of her size, and giving ominous warnings about how unhealthy she is.

That Dawn could bound onstage with such energy and optimism, given the latest headlines about the obese Norfolk schoolboy when she is the embodiment of everything we are told we should not be – viz, if parents make another person like her, they should be locked up – was brave to say the least. But it was not foolhardy. Far from it.

The show, which is basically a memoir, is called 30 Million Minutes, because Dawn is now, improbably, 56 years old. Lots of family photos are also projected behind her, and the thing is, Dawn was not a fat child. She even did ballet. In one photo, she wears a bikini.

After puberty, though, she began to suffer from low self esteem, and she talks about wearing a pair of hot pants, and how the fat of her thighs oozed out below them, and her tummy spilled over the top. She showed the audience her tummy, and in profile it exactly mirrors her bottom. She explores the irony of always looking pregnant but being unable to conceive a child.

The pivotal moment in her life happened when, leaving for a party to try to get off with a boy, her father took her to one side, and told her she is beautiful, and loved. From that moment, she accepted her shape, embraced it, became confident, and happy in her own not inconsiderable skin.

So, a nurturing, encouraging parent created a child who became a fat teenager, and a fatter adult.

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A chance remark can be just as influential in how someone turns out. My dad only told me I looked lovely when he was on his death bed, by which time it was too late: I’d spent every day since I turned 11 on less than 800 calories a day, trying to be perfect.

A friend was very strict on portion sizes with her son, mainly because she was obsessed with money, and he became convinced his thighs were too fat, and would perform hundreds of sit ups.

I doubt she or my dad would have been arrested, though, because being slim is the ideal.

The stand-up's new show is largely about how she has been ridiculed for her weight throughout her career

It’s hard to know exactly what is the right thing to say to a teenager to ensure he or she grows up happy and confident, free from extremes.

And anyway, who is to say being fat is a passport to misery? Dawn’s father, in the many photos displayed on stage, was both handsome and wiry, but he committed suicide when she was only 19.

Dawn and I are almost exactly the same age, but when Dawn was embarking on a hugely enjoyable and lucrative career, I was being force-fed in St Bart’s Hospital and attending Pilates classes.

Dawn is a mum, and now, having remarried, a step mum in a happy cocoon of a family.

She seems in a good place, other than the anger that bursts out over the top of her black opaque tights about the continual negative press coverage, particularly at the headline, ‘Come on, Dawn, you know you’ve had a gastric band’ when she lost 7st, which she reveals (there are lots of heart-breaking revelations) was due to having to lose weight to undergo a hysterectomy because of a cancer scare.

The press coverage is odd, as all she’s ever given us over the years is laughter. Her upbeat advocation of embracing who you are is a British attitude worthy of a different sort of D-Day.

The only omission in her riveting monologue is that she doesn’t explain why she became quite so fat. It might have been the huge stews her mum made, or her love of Curly Wurlys. Maybe, and understandably, she ate to assuage grief. Or perhaps she just lived life to the full.

There were a lot of very big women in the audience in Sheffield on Friday night. They all left the show smiling, not just because Dawn was funny, which she was – her response to Kate Moss’s assertion that ‘Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels’ was a bellowed ‘Pasties!’ – but because, for once, they perhaps didn’t need to be apologetic about their size, constantly tugging a waterfall cardi across their embonpoint, promising to start that diet tomorrow. They felt understood.

The tour continues nationwide and, surprisingly, it’s not sold out. If you have a daughter, or have ever denied yourself a doughnut because you think, ‘When I’m thin, I will be happy’, buy a ticket. Dawn French really could save your life…